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52 should deal directly with the head-men of the weaving villages, and pledge them in return for special advantages to make no contracts with private employers.

Hastings' services in this connexion hastened his removal from the 'Coast' Presidency to the scene of his future greatness. For some years past, ever since Clive's return to England, the Company's affairs in Bengal had been falling back into their old disorder under the weak rule of Verelst and Cartier. The rich provinces won by Clive's sword and further secured by his diplomacy had been left in the hands of native administrators, whose agents fleeced their own countrymen in the name of a pensioned sovereign living in idle state at Murshidábád. An army of Faujdárs, Amils, Sardárs, and such like gentry, preyed like parasites on the people and fattened on the revenues designed for the Company's use. The English 'supervisors,' appointed in 1769 to check these abuses and to look after the Company's interests, were, in Hastings' own words, 'the boys of the service,' who made themselves 'rulers, very heavy rulers, of the people.' Against the mischief caused by their ignorance or their greed, the Board of Revenue at Murshidábád was too weak, or too dishonest, to make much headway.

Within the Calcutta Council things were no better. Clive's reforms had fallen on barren soil. Every Councillor did that which seemed right in his own eyes — from the money-grabbing point of view. The